Back to Basic Living

We awoke this morning to a thermometer that pegged out at a whopping 2 degrees. I know that many of you are suffering far colder temperatures than that (I read it was -40 somewhere in Minnesota yesterday!), but I have to believe that 2 degrees is cold by most standards. At 10:30AM, it was 9 degrees. The chickens have two outside waterers, and I’ve been rotating them every hour or so to make sure they have some water to drink today, should they venture out.

Yesterday our chickens awoke to the first significant amount of snow they have ever seen. It was really only a dusting. But they were not impressed. While they have seen snow before, they had never experienced ground completely covered by it. Normally when I open their chicken door, they come barreling down their chicken plank at full speed, running in all directions. When I opened their chicken door yesterday, however, not one of them came out. I peeked inside and found an opening covered in chicken faces with eyes as big as saucer. After two minutes or so, a brave Phoenix started down the plank, but she high tailed it back inside before reaching the ground. It took a while, but a handful eventually made it out into the yard. Around 9AM I noticed six chickens in the yard, and all the others stayed in the coop. Even though it never got above freezing yesterday, the sun eventually melted off the snow in their run. But the chickens remained in a fowl mood (pardon the pun) for the entire day.

We have no snow today, but the majority of the chickens are staying in the coop. It’s just too darn cold out there. Chickens may not be the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they are smarter than most people give them credit for!

Last night I was attempting to squeeze some hair ball medicine out of a tube to give to Priscilla when, quite suddenly, the tube bottom sprung a leak and squirted a 5 inch long blob of sticky, nasty hair ball medicine on the top of Priscilla’s head, over her ear, and down her neck. I would say she was unhappy, but the truth is she was furious. Priscilla does not like anything to drip, plop, or ooze on her. I learned that when she was sitting on my lap one morning while I was eating breakfast and a minuscule drop of egg yolk landed on her head. From her reaction you would have thought it was acid. And she wouldn’t even look at me for the remainder of the day. That cat can carry a grudge like you would not believe.

At any rate, I immediately grabbed Priscilla and wiped off as much hair ball medicine as I could. Then I wet a paper towel and tried to wash it as well as I could. You can not imagine how incredibly angry she was with me. I could barely get her to look at me the rest of the night, and when she did, she would give me the stink eye. Elvis got tired of her complaining about it and eventually decided to try and help out:

“Oh, wait a minute. I missed a spot.”

Ignore the cold weather gear draped over the dining room chairs. They are “on ready” for any ventures outside. Oh, and also ignore the fact that there are cats on the dining room table. If it makes you feel any better, they also get on the counters, beds, cabinets, and all furniture and they open cabinet doors and crawl inside if they are in the mood.

Oh, and wonderful news! My parents adopted a rescue puppy they found on Pet Finder! They are so excited, and I’m really happy for them. It’s a little Dapple Dachshund and it sounds like quite a character. They named him Oliver. I tried to find his picture on the website, but couldn’t. I hope they figure out how to email one to me. I just can’t wait to see this little guy.

And speaking of puppies, you may have noticed that I put a puppy count down on the right side of the blog. Frugalmom suggested it and I love it! Only seven more days until we pick them up! Yay! I’m taking a vacation day next Friday and we’re heading down bright and early to get them. Yay again! They are currently about 235 miles from us, so it will be a long trip for those little babies. We plan to make several stops during the trip so they can get out and potty and stretch their little puppy legs. I’ll be sure to post lots of pictures when they get here.

It has been many years since we had a puppy, let alone two at the same time, in this house. In fact, other than the peeps, it’s been a great long while since there was any baby in this house. It will be an adjustment, no doubt. We’re looking forward to it though. I can not say the same for Elvis and Priscilla.

I just realized this entire post is about nothing but animals. I wish I had some news about the homestead, but the truth is that it’s been so darn cold, we haven’t done much recently. Bernie stays on top of the firewood supply and I stay on top of taking care of the chickens. Other than that, we rarely wander outside during this frigid weather.

We’re gearing up for the Virginia Legislative session and keeping track of the unbelievable amount  of bills that are dropping daily. As they say, our rights are only safe when the legislature is not is session. We’ll be headed to Richmond on Lobby Day next Monday. Lobby Day is a great day to meet up with your representatives and let them know what matters to you. That’s something Bernie and I try to do year round, but it’s nice to show up in Richmond as the session starts and let them know we’re still around. If you plan to be there, look us up!

Bee Free,

Penny

I have finally finished setting up the Penny Lane Bath Shop and we’re open for business! I still don’t have all the pictures up, but I’ll be adding them over time. I’ve listed soaps, lotions, perfumes, room fresheners, soap dishes, and face scrubs. I’ll be adding more in the future.

From now until November 30, you can get 10% off of your first order - including shipping! Just enter “basicliving” (without the quotes) in the coupon box on the check out page. There is a limitation in PayPal that will not accept discounts, so I am forced to simply send the total through to PayPal. As a result, your invoice will not contain your purchase details - it will only contain one line with the total amount due and that amount will reflect the 10% off.

After you order, send me an email with your feedback about your shopping experience at Penny Lane Bath and I’ll send you another coupon code for 10% off your next order in appreciation.

So let’s do some shopping! Just click here to get started.

Bee Free,
Penny

With the weather warming a little on the homestead, we’ve been busy outside. While I rarely go outside when it’s cold, you can hardly keep me inside when it’s warm. I absolutely love warm weather. I even love hot weather. I don’t even mind hot and humid weather. But I am really not a fan of cold weather.

Bernie’s been busy with the fence. He’s about 80% finished with the posts now. The last little bit is going slow as he has to clear a path for it. I helped him pull out some old, rusted, fallen field fencing with barb wire on it last weekend. He has some trees to cut down and brush to remove before he can do much more. He’s reseeded the entire yard and laid down straw over the most naked parts. Today he started building my raised beds. Yay! Over the weekend he helped me get the radishes and spinach in some large containers outside. He also helped me build a little flower bed around the well head. We used a few of the thousands of very large rocks we’ve dug out of the ground around here. We filled it with some soil and then I planted a variety of wildflowers in it.

This weekend, First Choice Construction came out and built Bernie’s barn shed and my garden shed. I have to tell you, we were completely impressed. This company not only beat the heck out of the price of pre-fab sheds from Lowe’s, they custom built them on our property and used some top quality materials. Top notch workmanship, too. I just don’t think I can say enough about them. If you live in Virginia and need a building built, I strongly suggest you get ahold of them. I have no clue how far they will travel, but they came about 120 miles to build our building. So check them out! http://www.firstchoiceconstruction.us/ In the meantime, here are some pictures:

Is that not the cutest little garden shed you’ve ever seen? I just love it! That’s Chris, one of the owners of First Choice, on the left, and his helper Bruce on the right. I managed to chop off the roof in this picture, but decided to post it anyway because it’s the only one I had with both Chris and Bruce in it. Chris is super nice and very professional. Bruce is really sweet, and spends a lot of time talking to himself. He even asks himself questions, and then answers them. It seems to help him work - and he is a very hard worker.

That’s Chris in front of Bernie’s barn shed. You probably have barn shed envy. I’m sure that’s the coolest barn shed ever.

And that’s Chris beside his monster freaking truck. That is one cool truck. And that bad boy can haul all kinda massive size loads. It has side compartments that carry every shed building tool known to man.

These guys built these two sheds in a total of two days. From scratch. Even the doors. I was sorry I didn’t get to meet Kat, Chris’ wife and the other owner of First Choice. She handles the customer service portion and scheduling of the business. Kat’s great at what she does and she’s super sweet. She spent a lot of time with me on the phone, not only discussing exactly what we wanted in these buildings, but giving advise on purchasing and caring for chickens, as well as building a chicken coop.

So there you have it. We’re tickled pink with our buildings and totally impressed with First Choice Construction. We’ve got lettuce that’s sprouted, garlic that’s perking up, spinach and radishes planted, a new rock garden, vegetable beds in the works, and a fence that’s close to being finished.

Life is good on the homestead. And Elvis has slept through most of it.

Bee Free,
Penny

This blog and our website have been such great experiences for us. I started the website because when we first considered homesteading, I found lots of site about people who were homesteading, but very few that explained how they got started with it. I figured we were bumbling our way through it, and maybe someone could learn from the mistakes we make as we go and the stuff we do right. I never dreamed we would make so many new friends, and hook up with so many old friends we had lost touch with. It’s been great! Now if we could only get our families to look at it…… they’d rather call and ask “So what have you been up to? Anything new on your website?”

I think I told y’all that Senator Obenshain asked us to get a bunch of bikers together and ride in a parade for him the second weekend in October. Senator Obenshain has been a great friend to us, and we love riding, so we got a crew together and made him proud. Here’s a group shot at the end of it. If you’ve ever been around bikers you know that trying to get them in one place in one time is as easy as nailing jello to a tree, so this picture is missing a few. But it’s a nice picture anyway, so I’ll post it here:

I also posted some additional pictures on the VFR website. Check them out!

We were having a lot of trouble with yellow jackets robbing honey in one of our hives. We ended up screening in the bottom entrance, so the girls would all use the top entrance and hopefully be able to ward off the predators a little better. Well, they were still struggling. So I put out some wasp traps that I hope will give the girls a little break. I talk about how to make the traps on The Bee Buzz if you are interested in reading it.

Tonight I made some coffee soap that is supposed to be great at getting rid of cooking smells (like onion, garlic, fish) off your hands. I have always wanted to make those pretty swirl soaps, but I never had much confidence that I could actually do it, so I didn’t try. Well, tonight I decided to give it a shot. I made the swirl color out of cocoa powder. The coffee soap is a dark tan, so I thought the deep cocoa color would be pretty in it. And it probably would. But I learned what I suspected all along. I am swirl challenged. So instead of swirled soap, I have blobbed soap. But it really smells nice. I’m hoping when I take it out of the mold tomorrow and cut it, it won’t look as bad as it does in the mold. But did I mention it smells really nice?

Bee Free,
Penny

Well, after trying to sell our home in town for over a year, we’ve decided to go to Plan B. As much as we had hoped and planned to sell the house and use that money to pay off all debt before we move to our homestead, circumstances have led us to realize that it really makes more sense for us to move forward. Bernie has resigned from his job effective August 31. Three more weeks, and we’ll be on our homestead permanently.

I will keep my job for now so that we can continue to meet all of our financial obligations. It will be a little tight, but it is certainly doable. In the meantime, Bernie will slowly move our belongings out to the homestead, and clean and paint our home in town. Maybe it will sell more quickly if it is empty. I’m happy that we’ll finally be on our homestead and I can realize my dream of having chickens and goats. Bernie’s happy that he’ll no longer have to wake up to a 3:15AM alarm clock. We’re both happy that we no longer have to remember what food, furniture, tools, and clothing we have at one place or the other. We stay perpetually confused about where our “stuff” is.

It was a nice weekend on the homestead. We went out Thursday night and enjoyed a nice, quiet, relaxing evening. It helped that there was no sign of bears. Then we went to Natural Bridge, VA on Friday for a Governor’s Motorcycle Advisory Council meeting that Bernie had. The meetings are open to the public, so I decided to attend since it was being held in such a cool place. If you’ve never been to Natural Bridge, it’s worth visiting. It has been listed as one of the “Natural Wonders” of the world. Very scenic. We rode our bikes down and although I confess to being very partial to Virginia, I will still say that there really is not a more beautiful state. Every state has something to offer, but I think Virginia has it all. And it’s so darn pretty.

At any rate, we stayed Friday night at the Natural Bridge Hotel and it was awesome. The hotel is completely biker friendly and the guests just seemed to be there to enjoy life and have a good time. We made new friends from as close as neighboring counties in Virginia and as far away as New York and from other places that we never thought to ask about. Some were bikers and some were not. It was a really super stay in a really beautiful place. I give it four out of five stars - and that’s only because the rooms could use just a little renovation.

We arrived back to the homestead Saturday morning and enjoyed a relaxing day. This morning we got up and got busy with the bees again. You can read about it on The Bee Buzz.

We had another great weekend on the homestead - and it only made it more enjoyable realizing that we will only be leaving it two more times before being there permanently! You’ll be hearing a lot more from me after that - you lucky dawgs.

Bee Free,
Penny